


Six-Point Turn

by the_wordbutler



Category: Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: Trial by Jury
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, HSAU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 14:16:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are six points to longing. These are Alexandra Cabot's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Objection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/gifts).



> Written as part of the Manhattan Prep universe. The originating fic which kicked this off, written by perpetual motion, can be found [here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/586303/chapters/1053738)

“Low-hanging fruit – oh, wait, that says 'abortion,'” Mr. Logan reads off a note card. He’s leaning against the podium, note cards in his hands, and looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. It’s the last period of the last Friday before midterms, and he’s assigning midterm partner projects. Anyone could see why he’d want to be elsewhere. “Anyway, abortion goes to Southerlyn and Borgia. Corporal punishment in schools – Van Buren’s gonna love you – goes to Salazar and Curtis. Which leaves – “

Alex plays with her pen idly, glancing out the window. It’s the first spring semester day that’s going to be nice, and while she’s not the type of student to long to be out of class, she desperately wants to spend a little time outside before she’s forced to hole up with books and notes for the weekend and study her life away. Casey and Connie are already out of their class – they’ve got gym last period, and Fin always lets them out early – and are milling around the sidewalk, waiting for the last bell. And she’s – 

“All right,” Mr. Logan says, glancing once at the clock. “Get out of here. Have a good weekend, and you’ve got a week for the research project.”

The rest of the students more-or-less rocket out of their seats, and in the commotion, Alex realizes that she’s missed her partner assignment. She gathers up her books and stands, ready to go ask Mr. Logan to repeat what she’s missed, when the new girl steps in front of her.

“Hi,” she says.

The new girl has flame-red hair and a quiet voice, never mind the freckles and the round eyes. She’s holding her notebook and ethics text against her chest and almost looks a little like a freshman, even though Alex knows she’s a second-semester junior, too, and Claire’s new roommate. Claire’s said very little about her – “She’s nice,” she explained at lunch the day before, “but kind of quiet.” – and Alex realizes (after ducking a ball of paper Green lobs at Lupo) that she’s standing there because Mr. Logan’s made them partners. 

“Hey,” Alex says.

“We’re partners,” the new girl states. “I’m Lynn.”

“Alex,” and Alex glances out the window, where Connie and Casey are waiting impatiently for her to come out. “I missed what Mr. Logan assigned us.”

“Conscientious objection.” That catches her attention and she looks back at Lynn. “It was in chapter one,” she continues, like it’s the most casual conversation in the world. “We didn’t spend a lot of time on it, but it’s ethically interesting.” She puts her book down and starts flipping through the pages. “Almost all modern societies recognize conscientious objection as a legal alternative to serving in a war, but still require non-military duties.” 

Normal teenage girls would back out of the conversation. Normal teenage girls would point out that for the first time since October, the sun is shining without the threat of New York snow, the grass is green, and there will undoubtedly be a pick-up game of football or Frisbee on the lawns that will involve Eliot Stabler and Ed Green taking off their shirts. 

Alex has never been normal. She slides into a desk chair.

“Ethically, what’s the problem?” she asks.

Lynn looks at her, and she has fantastically green eyes. 

“Listen to the requirements to be legally registered as an objector,” she replies, and ends up in the chair next to Alex, bending over the same book like it’s the most natural thing in the world.


	2. Rebellion

“You’re crazy!” Lynn squeals, and actually bunches up in the front seat and covers her eyes as Alex takes a turn a little more sharply than she should. Her expression – her fear, really – makes Alex laugh, and the MG recovers easily from half a fishtail. “You’re not going to get us expelled, I take it back – you’re going to get us killed!”

The top on the convertible is down and the fall evening lives as wind through their hair as Alex settles the car into the right lane. “I told you, Mr. Fontana is friends with my Uncle Roger.”

“The judge?” Lynn peeks through her fingers.

“No, that’s Uncle Bill. Uncle Roger is the Armani buyer. Mr. Fontana let me have the keys.”

“You told him we were going to do research.”

“We are,” but Alex says it lightly. It’s fall of their senior year and it’s strange, seeing Lynn after the summer break. Her hair’s gotten longer and Alex almost thinks that she hit a growth spurt of some kind in the last ten weeks, because she can stand next to Claire now and not look twelve. While Alex spent the summer “interning” at Cabot, Taylor and Cage (doing menial desk work at her father’s firm), Lynn tells stories about going to her grandparents’ dairy farm in Wisconsin and mucking through June, July, and a third of August with cows and chickens. She listens to Alex’s anecdotes and expresses jealousy, and Alex tries to be smug but can’t.

She would have rather been with cows than her parents. It would have been easier.

“What research?” Lynn demands, but she’s sitting up. Her school sweater looks like it’s gotten tighter in the chest. Alex notices in a glance and then focuses on the road. She’s not supposed to notice. She’s supposed to notice the lanky new kid that Connie has been talking about, Mike-something, who is awkward but, according to Connie, “kind of cute.”

“Life experience. How are we supposed to talk intelligently about the affects of politics on every day life in Mr. McCoy’s class if we haven’t tried a dose of real life? Never mind the practical applications of inertia we’re experiencing in the car.”

She demonstrates by putting her foot down and Lynn squeals. Her hair is a mess of loose, wind-swept strands and the speed only makes it worse. “That’s total bull!” she challenges.

Alex laughs at her again. “Just enjoy it!”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t!” and Lynn grins at her in a way that lights up her whole face and her fantastic eyes. Alex has almost missed those eyes. She can’t bring herself to remove the modifier, though, for fear of what it means. “I just think you’re crazy!”

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may!” she announces to Lynn and the wind, and lets the engine roar.


	3. Abandon

Lynn opens the conversation with, “So, I have this aunt.”

There’s snow on the ground and it’s freezing outside, which is why Alex is grateful they’re inside, bundled in blankets and sitting on the floor next to the radiator. The girls’ building is notoriously drafty and old, and since most of the students have left for winter break, most of the students have shut off their heat. Lynn and Claire’s room, minus Claire, is one of about three havens of warmth, but it’s late December and in the dark of night, “warm” as a term is relative. 

They’re the last two weekend warriors, the last students on campus for the term. Alex’s parents pick her up Monday morning to go to Vail for the holidays. Lynn’s car arrives Monday afternoon to take her to the airport so she can go to Wisconsin for Christmas. 

It’s late Saturday night. 

Alex glances over at Lynn over the last of her hot chocolate. “An aunt?”

“This one aunt. I have seven or eight total but I haven’t met most of them. My parents were farm kids, working their way up from mucking stalls, but… I have this aunt. She’s different.”

“Different how?”

“Different in the way that’s not okay when you live in Wisconsin. Well, anywhere that’s not Madison.” Lynn picks at a hangnail and doesn’t look at Alex. She’s all in profile, wearing her too-big flannel pajamas. They’re a weird pair, Alex thinks to herself; Lynn’s parents are account executives at a big investment firm and her parents are a lawyer and a lawyer’s Junior League wife, certainly, but Lynn’s never spent a school break since kindergarten with her parents (always off to Wisconsin) and Alex has never known what it’s like to roll up her sleeves and get dirty. Even their pajamas – Alex’s are fitted and part-silk – are a mismatch.

Her belly flops when Lynn speaks.

She scoots a half-inch closer. “I don’t – “

“She got married right out of high school to some guy and they had this kid. And he’s okay, I guess. She’s in charge of stall setups at the farmer’s market, so it’s not like she’s left the ‘family business’. But when I was ten, she left her husband. And now lives with someone else.” Her eyes slide up to Alex’s face. “Anne.”

Alex takes a breath and lets it out. The room feels smaller, colder, and quieter now. “Really.”

“I think about it sometimes.” It feels like Lynn’s moved closer, though Alex isn’t sure how. “I mean, not about them, but about… How everything works. You know?”

“Yeah.” 

“You do?”

Lynn asks the question and one second, two seconds, a dozen seconds slip by before Alex’s heart is in her throat and she’s finding Lynn’s lips in the dim lamp light, their backs against the radiator and their blankets bunching together. Lynn tastes like hot chocolate. It makes Alex want so much more than a little kiss. 

It stops being a little kiss after a few seconds. Alex has kissed boys, and Lynn probably has too, but it’s never felt like this. It’s never set every inch of her on fire, and she slides closer, half-sitting on Lynn’s leg, working to find her skin under the pajamas.

“Alex,” and Lynn’s voice is the smallest puff of air. Connie and Casey call her Alexandra most the time, not because they have to, but because it’s like an in-joke to them. Alex hates it, but she wants to put up with more of that abuse to keep hearing how different her name sounds on Lynn’s lips. 

“I want – “ Alex stops. She doesn’t know how to verbalize what she wants.

“Me too.”

They end up in a pile on the blankets, fumbling and uncertain, because knowing how you’d do it yourself is no match for finding out how to do the same for someone else. Lynn’s skin is so pale and so freckled, Alex feels like a strange-looking behemoth next to her. At least, she does until Lynn’s touch is on her thighs, spreading her legs and tripping through motions they both knew until this moment. 

Then, Alex doesn’t care what she is. 

She doesn’t care the next morning, when she tastes Lynn’s belly button, her knees, her hips, and everywhere else. She doesn’t care the next night, when Lynn laughs and won’t let her down off the roller coaster enough to recover until she’s panting and begging. 

On Monday, Alex climbs into the limousine to go to Vail. Her mother looks at her. “You look different,” she comments. “I don’t – oh. I know what it is.”

There’s a tense pause, and when Alex looks at the floor, her mother shakes her head. “Really, Alexandra. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. You must learn to take better care of your hair.”


	4. Introduction

“She’s so…crude, Alexandra.”

“Crude?”

“Well, no, not crude. I suppose that’s a bit harsh. She’s . . . rough.”

“You’re talking about Lynn like you talk about the help, Mom!”

“Do not take that tone with me, young lady.”

Alex wonders how much Lynn can hear in the sitting room while they’re in the kitchen just down the hall, preparing tea and finger sandwiches like Lynn is one of her mother’s big-haired Junior League women, trying to relive being a debutante. Daffodils are just starting to bloom in the window box but her mother is so fixated on Lynn’s presence, she doesn’t seem to notice.

She arranges the pre-made sandwiches on the tray.

“I’m simply meaning,” she continues, not looking up, “that you can do better in the way of friends than a farm girl. You said yourself that her grandparents are unable to accommodate her for spring break because they’re showing cattle in Tulsa.” She shakes her head. Her over-curled hair bobs, but only slightly. “And really, you must consider: what kind of girl is she, if her own parents don’t want her for the duration? If they live in the city, you would think they’d be glad to see their daughter.” She looks up at smiles. Her hand pats Alex’s cheek. “Like I am to see mine.”

Alex resists her urge to roll her eyes. It takes a vast amount of restraint to do so. Luckily, the kettle whistles so she can breathe again, and once she does, she points out, “Her parents have difficult jobs and travel a lot. She doesn’t have many other friends. I thought we could do her a favor, let her stay here so she’s not alone on campus with scholarship kids and detentioners. Even the teachers are gone for break.” She shifts from foot to foot. “And I wanted you to meet her.”

“Wanted me to meet her?” Her mother glances over her shoulder. “Alexandra, if you wanted me to meet your friends, you should have told me. I would have come to school and taken you all on a ladies’ weekend. Connie, Casey, Claire – those are your other friends, right? – and then Lynn, here. It would have been fun.”

Alex purses her lips and finally shrugs. “My other friends wouldn’t really be into that.”

“I’m not sure your other friends are the ones who wouldn’t enjoy it, Alexandra.” She clucks her tongue as she picks up the tray. “No bother. Another few months, and you will be off to Yale. No more games with farm girls.” 

As much as she wants to follow, her feet are concrete as she watches her mother walk away.

She doesn’t need to be reminded when graduation is. She knows.


	5. Graduation

Alex stands in the doorway and watches Lynn struggle to close her trunk. The dormitories are quiet, almost eerily so, like they’ve been in the last week since graduation. The students leave at strange times – Mike Cutter disappearing almost in the dead of night, Ed Green practically streaking down the hallway in his boxers when his parents arrived three hours early to pick him up, Claire packed and ready before the ceremony – and Alex had to beg and barter to get her parents to let her stay one extra week. She’s been enrolled in a summer program at NYU, never mind interning at her father’s firm, and she knows Lynn’s summer plans: farming before going to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lynn makes an unhappy noise and kicks her trunk. “Close!” she demands, and when that doesn’t work, she kicks it again. “Just – “

“Here,” and Alex walks in quickly enough that she doesn’t see the way Lynn’s shoulders lock when she surprises her. She comes over and, without much prelude, sits down on the trunk. It holds the lid down, and Lynn stares at her for a moment before she steps closer and snaps the closures. “Thanks,” she murmurs.

“Are you – “

“The car’s coming tonight.” She drops next to Alex on the end of the trunk. Alex’s never understood how Lynn can be so confident in front of their class or judges for a mock trial competition when, right now, she can’t meet Alex’s eyes. “I’ve got an overnight layover in Chicago at the airport hotel and then it’s back home.” 

“Your parents?”

“They’re going to come to parents’ weekend at UWM.” She snorts softly and steals one look at Alex. “At least you get to see yours.”

“Hardly. They’re sending me to a month-long workshop meant for students going into pre-law and then I’m working at my dad’s firm.”

“And then Yale.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a long silence, not just in the room, but across the whole of the school. Manhattan Prep is no longer Manhattan Prep in these days; it’s a ghost town, a memory of what it used to be, and Alex listens to the plastic blinds clatter in a summer breeze that sneaks through the window. Last weekend, she’d hugged Connie and Casey and they’d all cried together. Tonight, it’s she and Lynn. 

But no tears left for this moment. At least, that’s how it feels.

Lynn’s fingers, which are curled around the lip of the trunk, brush Alex’s, and she glances at their hands. Lynn has short fingernails that have been worn down from months of biting them before competitions. She has rough fingers from working on the farm at the summer. The touch makes Alex’s heart stop in her chest. It’s so familiar, so warm, and right now, feels so far away.

“Alex,” and it’s a whisper when her lips brush Lynn’s neck. “Alex,” and it’s a curse when Alex’s hand slips under her t-shirt. “Alex,” and it’s a plea when they trip back to the stripped bed and tumble through what once was clumsy luck and now is practiced ease. 

Alex only cries when she watches the livery car pull away.


	6. Resolution

“Alex? Alex Cabot?”

Alex is halfway through her first glass of wine when a voice calls her name, and she lifts her head to see a gorgeous redhead in a sharp business suit coming her way. The restaurant bar is classy but crowded, New York City half-formal fare, and she’s just finished checking her watch for the fourth time. Liz is late, but then, Liz is always late coming from either the publisher’s or her agent’s or the studio. Adapting material for the screen is not a job with reasonable hours, or so she always complains.

The redhead slides between two business men who look like they’re considering the things they could do to her and says, “It really is you! Of all the places! I don’t believe it.” She grins, and Alex can’t help but think she has the most fantastically green eyes.

She knows those eyes.

“Lynn?” she asks, and Lynn Bishop’s grin is a sunbeam on a gray day when she reaches forward and hugs Alex in a way she hasn’t hugged her since they said goodbye and promised to keep in touch after high school. She smells sweet and she looks nothing like the slightly-gangly teen Alex’s mother had turned her nose up at. She’s a woman now, but then, so is Alex.

“I’d heard you were still in New York,” Lynn admits after she orders a drink, slipping uninvited (but did she need an invitation) onto the stool next to Alex. “I’m never here long enough to really look you up, but I thought about it every time. I even once – “ and she accepts her wine graciously. “ – looked at all the Cabots in the white pages, but there are a lot of you.”

“I always told you I have a lot of uncles,” she teases. 

“I could never keep them straight. The Armani buyer, the judge, the three hundred lawyers…” She shakes her head. “Family business.”

“The next generation.” Alex raises her glass in a mockery of a toast. “Making my mother proud.”

“So you’re in law?” Lynn asks.

“Prosecutor’s office. I’m second chair in the sex crimes division.” She snorts at the face Lynn makes. “I know. I hated it at first. But now… There’s something really good about helping the people who can still talk about it. Even if some of their stories are horrible.” She shakes her head. She’s come off three horrible cases this week and doesn’t want to dwell on it, so she changes the subject with, “What do you do?”

Lynn’s grin is sheepish. “You’ll laugh.”

“Probably not.”

“I’m a business ethicist.”

Alex does laugh, and Lynn’s sharp look makes her feel immediately guilty. “Ethics? Mr. Logan would be so proud!”

“Mr. Logan would mock me because he thought I was going to be Mr. McCoy’s protégé even though he always liked Mike better. I went through the first year of law school, too, but… There’s something about being lawyer that got to me. I can see the morally grey area but I’m not sure I can always live in it. It’s easier telling ING or JP Morgan Chase how not to screw people.”

She laughs again and Lynn glares at her over the lip of her glass. “You’re probably good at that.”

“I got Tony Profaci to play a witness and not call all the cop characters ‘pigs’ every time they came in conversation. This is easy.”

They both laugh together, this time, and Alex is about to rehash her own memories of school – the famous regional mock trial trip where the same Tony Profaci had tried to look up one of his competitors' skirts and nearly got a black eye for his effort – when a pretty blonde woman walks up at a quick clip. “Sorry,” she says to Lynn, and her voice is a rushed accent that sounds like New York and Boston and Chicago all in one. “I forgot the address and the taxi driver took me around in three circles.”

Lynn blinks and looks almost embarrassed for a half second before she says, “No, it’s okay. Kelly, this is a friend of mind from high school, Alex Cabot. I just ran into her. Alex, this is Kelly Gaffney. She’s part of the Boston University legal team. We met when I took the job there.”

Kelly has a nice smile and shakes Alex’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Lynn’s mentioned you a couple times.”

“Hopefully good things,” Alex replies lightly, but it’s immediately obvious that Kelly is not just a legal expert from Boston. It’s the way Kelly stands right at Lynn’s arm, the way her hand brushes Lynn’s thigh when she leans onto the bar to order a drink. There’s a casual ease to the contact and even though Lynn is subtle, it’s not subtle enough.

It’s like a red flashing sign when her hand lands on Kelly’s lower back. Alex drops her eyes to her wine. 

“What do you do?” Kelly asks as she comes away from the bar with a beer that the bartender has shoved a slice of lime into, an attempt to be classy. 

“I’m a lawyer.” 

“You too?” Kelly’s eyes move to Lynn, all amusement. “You don’t have a type?”

“I don’t,” Lynn protests, holding up a hand. 

“Blonde lawyer.”

“Alex wanted to be a – “

“Oh no,” Alex objects, holding up a finger. “You’re not sharing that with the class, Miss Bishop.”

“You sound like Mr. McCoy.”

“You sound like Mr. Logan.”

“I’ll take that.” She grins incorrigibly and Alex laughs, and even with Kelly there, sandwiched somewhere between them, it’s almost comfortable. They laugh and kid for another ten minutes before a waitress is coming over and telling Lynn that her table is ready. 

“I’ll go,” Kelly offers, and touches Lynn’s arm before she follows the waitress off, which leaves both of them sitting there at the bar, empty wine glasses and eyes that don’t quite meet. Alex watches the bartender mix a martini. She doesn’t know what Lynn’s watching.

“Let me give you my card,” Lynn finally says, and digs into her purse before she pulls out a battered business card. She flips it over and scrawls a number with a Boston area code on the back. It’s the same messy handwriting she’s always had. “You can call me. Maybe we can see each other when I’m in the city.”

Her fingertips are rough when she hands over the card. Some things must really never change. “I’ll call,” she says, knowing immediately she won’t and that Lynn won’t expect it. “Have a good dinner.” 

Lynn looks at her for a few seconds too long, and Alex can’t look away. It’s been more than ten years, and Lynn looking at her like that still makes her feel like she’s a million miles from the last comfort she’s known. “Take care.”

“You too.”

She watches Lynn disappear into the crowd and counts to ten before she digs through her bag. The bartender gets a thirteen dollar tip from the twenty and when she’s pushing out of the door, she nearly collides with a brunette bundle of nerves and wrinkled khakis.

“Alex!” Liz exclaims, and catches her before she can walk out onto the sidewalk. A middle-aged couple has to push past them and Alex blinks at her three or four times before she recognizes her. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I had to do a rewrite and – “

“Do you want to go home and order a pizza?” Alex asks abruptly, still standing in the doorway. The door can’t close for them standing there, and Liz frowns at her. She’s got something on her top, probably dressing from lunch, and Alex focuses on it for a beat too long. “I want to go home,” she says finally, and meets Liz’s eyes. “I know we were going to go out, but – “

“Are you okay?” 

The question hits the air and for a second, Alex is sure she smells the first nice day of spring looming somewhere in the melting gloom of a city February.

“I will be,” she says plainly, and puts an arm around Liz’s shoulders to turn her away from the restaurant, and towards the rest of New York.


End file.
